Presence management : what is it for?

At a time when local consumer searches are becoming increasingly important (+900% in "near me" searches over two years, according to Google consumer statistics)¹, it is becoming urgent to optimise the management of your points of sale's local SEO. Did you know that poor local SEO can harm store footfall and, consequently, your company's turnover? This is where presence management comes into play. What is presence management? What objectives does it help achieve? That is precisely what we will explore in this article.

👉 Article updated in July 2026.

1. Definition of presence management
2. Objective 1 : Ensuring a balanced online presence
3. Objective 2 : Saving time in managing local SEO
4. Objective 3: Climbing search engine rankings
5. Objective 4: Standardising brand identity
Conclusion

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1. Definition of presence management

Presence management refers to the tools or platforms that allow a business to simultaneously optimise the local SEO of a large network of points of sale across the web. Specifically, it enables the management of local SEO and GPS tools such as Google Business Profile, Maps, Apple Maps, and Waze, as well as social media channels and review sites. It forms an integral part of local digital communication.

For a retail network, ensuring solid local SEO across each of your outlets is crucial. This involves standardising their online presence, including:

Search engine ranking level : namely where each point of sale ranks in Google search results (known as the "SERP")
Store information : opening hours, address, phone number, etc.
Tools and services highlighted to drive web-to-store traffic : such as customer reviews, images, store locators, etc.

The reality is as follows : 46% of Google searches²are aimed at finding a local business. Furthermore, for 97% of consumers³, searching online is the first reflex when looking for a local store. Highlighting once again the complementary nature of the web and physical points of sale, these figures simultaneously demonstrate how vital it is to nurture your local SEO to generate store footfall.

Presence management gives you the means to manage your entire local SEO strategy in an optimal way, while keeping four main objectives in mind:

Ensuring an online presence for the entire retail network
Saving time when managing local SEO
Climbing search engine results to bring more footfall into stores
Standardising brand identity

These four objectives can also be viewed as the core challenges of presence management—challenges that are worth detailing to fully grasp what this approach can bring to your business.

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2. Objective 1: Ensuring a balanced online presence

It is easy to imagine that if every point of sale within a network manages its online presence in its own way, the results will vary significantly from store to store. This stems from differences in available time, as well as varying skill levels and creativity among teams. However, these discrepancies represent lost revenue for the brand as a whole : certain online customer touchpoints may cause frustration and dissatisfaction. For example, if displayed opening hours are out of date, or if the shop does not appear at the top of results when a search like "[brand name] + [location]" is performed.

To offer a concrete example, consider the case of Société Générale⁴. Before seriously tackling local SEO, certain Société Générale branches suffered from a lack of visibility in local searches, whereas others appeared at the very top of search results for the exact same query type. This visibility gap between outlets stemmed from technical issues and fragmented management of Google Business Profiles. Indeed, while some profiles were managed centrally from headquarters, others were owned directly by local branches.

A presence management solution—available on certain local marketing platforms—allows you to smooth out these imbalances, harmonising local SEO across all points of sale and eliminating potential barriers to store visits. For Société Générale, the effort paid off: the company recorded a 147% increase in visibility for indirect searches (without the brand name) and a 49% increase for direct searches.

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3. Objective 2 : Saving time in managing local SEO

Using a tool to manage tasks in batches saves a considerable amount of time. A presence management platform allows you to manage local SEO across all your points of sale on various apps and platforms. From Google to Facebook, Waze, and TripAdvisor, you optimise the time spent updating store information. This process is known as content syndication. Typically, this enables you to update details everywhere simultaneously to harmonise search results—whether updating holiday opening hours, uploading a new logo, or refreshing store descriptions.

With a presence management tool, it is also possible to delegate part of this management to local points of sale. While corporate headquarters retains control over updating opening hours and store locators across partner applications, each store is also empowered to enrich its profile with photos and posts, or to respond to customer reviews. This makes management far more effective and streamlined.

Although headquarters initially benefits from claiming ownership of all location profiles to centralise and update information en masse, the final organisational structure for ongoing page updates depends on the company's network management strategy. For maximum efficiency, once all pages are created, harmonised, and cleared of duplicates, headquarters can choose to let each individual store manage its own profile.

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4. Objective 3: Climbing search engine rankings

82% of smartphone users⁵ rely on their devices while shopping to perform "near me" searches. 76% of these searches result in a store visit within 24 hours⁶. The logic is straightforward : the easier you are to find, the higher the likelihood that consumers will visit your physical stores.

Here are a few actionable steps to encourage Google to rank your store higher :

Regularly updating local SEO profiles
Maintaining steady online activity tied to your stores (posting photos, sharing store updates, replying to reviews, etc.)
Ensuring customer satisfaction by providing all requested information—the foundation of a successful customer experience
Increasing inbound links pointing to individual store pages

By climbing search engine results, you significantly boost your chances of driving footfall into stores.

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5. Objective 4: Standardising brand identity

Ensuring that your points of sale's online presence is optimised across your entire network also guarantees that consumers access high-quality information. That is great news for your brand image. If an internet user turns up at a closed shop because the opening hours listed on its Google Business Profile were wrong, they will be unhappy—and they will voice their frustration. Remember, dissatisfied customers are often the loudest. Presence management helps you optimise the customer experience and reinforce a positive brand image across your entire retail estate.

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Conclusion

As you will have gathered, local SEO is essential to the prosperity of local businesses. Within a retail network, however, this task can be time-consuming and challenging to navigate without a firm grasp of the technical and strategic issues at play. Presence management offers the ideal solution for managing point-of-sale rankings consistently and effectively, helping to safeguard the longevity of your business by adapting to evolving consumer trends.